Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell

reduces the mile’s width of river to a stream. A thin young but patchily empurpled businessman strides uphill towards me, haranguing his mobile as he mimes a crisis that I can’t help hoping exceeds any of mine. I listen to the imprecisely distant bell that feels engulfed by the shapeless murmur of the crowd on the broad pavement, and then I hear my father. “I’ve got on my bike,” he says, “or I’m otherwise engaged. State your name, rank and serial number. Make that just your name and number and I’ll ring you back.”
    For the middle sentence he assumes the accent of an officer in an old British war film. I feel as humourless as Waterworth for not responding in kind, but I’m busy saying “It’s me, dad. We should talk. Let’s work out whatever needs it. Give me a call.”
    Wherever I’ve been speaking to, he isn’t there. He hasn’t replied by the time I arrive home. Above the entrance the blurred flood from the merman’s cornucopia is growing green with lichen. Perhaps some of the moisture responsible has trickled down the door, wetting the brass handle. I rub my stained hand on my trousers as I shoulder the door shut with an imposing thud.
    It sounds designed to daunt the lower orders—beggars, thieves, whoever might have roamed the streets after dark when the offices were built. It resounds through the buildingand, if I’m not mistaken, under it too. It dies away beneath me, and then the building is as silent as the old disconnected phone on the desk. So is my mobile, but suppose my father called the apartment instead?
    I run up the padded marble stairs and let myself in. A photograph of the waterfront glints as if a ripple on the sepia Mersey has moved to catch the light. The red zero of the answering machine beside my desk has rearranged its segments into an angular three. I thumb the button and sit at my desk, and wonder why the hooded figure in the dim depths of the office across the street is so immobile as I wait for the tape to speak.
    “Mr Meadows? Are you there, Mr Meadows? This is Moira Shea. Are you there? Me and the lad were on your tour when your da was talking about old Jack. We’d like to take you up on your offer, specially if he’s with you again. Are you not there? I’ll have to leave you our number, then, and you can let us know when you want us.”
    The next message is from my father, but at first I’m not sure if it is. It begins with a long loud breath that’s the basis of an even more protracted sigh, apparently of resignation. “I’m sorry you’re not there,” he says, “but I’m ready to say this, so I will. If somebody’s got to be worried I’d rather it wasn’t your mother.” Perhaps he plans to own up about his retirement, but his voice turns aside for an altercation, returning to say only “I don’t think this is the place. Give us a ring, Gav, when you get this.”
    By us, like many Liverpudlians, he presumably means just himself. I’m distracted by attempting to make out a face within the green or greenish hood of the still figure beyond the office window rendered little better than opaque by sunlight. As I reject the notion that the hood contains a pallid flat featureless lump reminiscent of a jellyfish, the tape produces its third message.
    At first this seems to consist entirely of the chatter of a drill in stone. The aggressive rattle lessens, though not agreat deal, and I’m just able to hear my father remarking “This is a joke.” Through a clangour of scaffolding he adds “Don’t call me for a bit. Give it half an hour at least.”
    I mustn’t waste any more time on the spectacle in the office, even if the featureless contents of the hood have begun to suggest some underground denizen that owes its pallor to never having seen the light. I crouch to replay my father’s first message. He has just finished expressing his reluctance to worry my mother when the mobile strikes up the octopus song on my desk.
    It’s out of reach unless I’m